


Warmth

by Scarlet66



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: A lot of crying too, But fluff in the end, But mostly angst, F/M, Fluff, yaaay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:04:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2770703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarlet66/pseuds/Scarlet66
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For ghouls, wounds are healed sometimes instantaneously, sometimes minutes or hours or days after they are inflicted, until they disappear and are forgotten completely. But some wounds are harder to heal than others. Some leave scars. Some wounds, if they can be mended at all, can only be healed through time and sometimes, through the touch of someone precious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warmth

**Author's Note:**

> An early birthday present to Kaneki Ken. I just really really needed to get my Touken feels out after reading the spoilers for Re chapter 10 *^* (TOUKEN IS WELL ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING CANON AND NOTHING WILL CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE) 
> 
> (Yaaay run-on sentences :D)

The first time Touka ever saw tears in Kaneki Ken's eyes was when she crammed a human's flesh into his mouth and he dug it back out using his hands.

The second time was as she stood between him and his best friend, saliva dripping from his mouth, eyes radiating killing intent and anger and desperation and above all, pure, raw hunger. 

The third time was while he was hunched over, shoulders shaking as the sandwich he had just eaten was forcefully ejected from his mouth. (Touka found it pretty funny.)

The fourth time was after she, without hesitation, snapped his finger with her foot.

The fifth time was almost four years later — after her weakness had painted his hair a haunting white and his nails a ghostly black; after he had left, only to supposedly get himself killed at the hands of CCG's God of Death; after he had finally,  _finally_  returned and she had wanted to slam the door in his sorry face, fling it open and yank him in so she could kick his pathetic ass, and break down into tears of her own all at once — when Touka went to check up on him at 3:43 am in the morning after hearing a loud thump in the room next to hers.

The apartment was dark and silent. Yomo had gone to find food and hadn't yet returned. It was times like these when she became afraid of the dark like she had been in her childhood, that reminded her of the time her whole goddamned family had walked out the door and never came back. It was times like these when it suddenly felt like the night would never end, that it would slowly but surely seep in through the cracks in the walls and crush her to death as she cried and screamed for help that would never come. 

She opened the door to his room, not bothering to be quiet as she entered since she could hear his ragged breathing and hiccuping even from the other side of the wall. The only light in the room was a faint sliver of moonlight from the window between the curtains. The rectangle of silver, disconnected as it fell across the wall and the disheveled blankets on the bed, illuminated one side of him, exposing his figure curled up on the floor. His back was against the wall, his shoulders were visibly shaking, his hands were clamped tightly against his face, his teeth were chattering nervously, his toes were scrunched up against his feet. 

Touka closed the door behind her, walked up to him and sat down, her arms wrapped around her bare legs — suddenly she regretted leaving the warmth of her blankets in just a t-shirt and shorts — because of the slight chill in the air. She put her chin on her knees, looked at him, waited for him to talk. Several minutes passed before his breathing returned to normal.

He laughed; the sound of it was tired and airy. "Sorry. Did I wake you?"

"I couldn't sleep anyway," she lied.

"I might have killed Hide."

Touka looked at him, her distress visible only in the temporary pause in her breathing and the way her shoulders momentarily went stiff.

"You haven't... haven't heard anything about him?" he asked.

"...No."

Another laugh, this time self-deprecating. "The first time I managed to use my kagune, it was to protect him. And now..." His fingers dug mercilessly into his skull.

"A few days before Anteiku was demolished, I promised to go to the zoo with Yoriko." Touka pulled her legs tighter against her chest. "That was the last time I saw her."

"...I'm sorry."

"The hell are you apologizing for?"

"...I don't know."

Silence hung between them for several more minutes, until Kaneki broke it, shoulders still, hands finally moving away from his face.

To his chin.

Above his hand his mouth stretched into a thin smile that silently screamed of everything he was trying to hide. "I'm okay now, Touka-chan. Sorry for waking you up." 

The last time he did that in front of her, she had punched him in the face. This time she leaned forward and took his hand, winding her fingers through his, and gently pushed it to the ground. 

"Next time, at least wipe your tears before you try to fake-smile at me. Moron."

Shoulders convulsing, his head tilted forward, sobs racking his entire body. Her hand did not let go of his until the cold silver light was replaced by a fiery orange.

 

* * *

 

The sixth time Touka saw Kaneki cry was in his sleep, after he dozed off on the couch on a warm afternoon with a book on his lap. 

The seventh time was after he took a sip of a cup of coffee she had made — she would never admit that she had intentionally made it just the way she knew he liked it — and then turned to her, tears in his eyes and the brightest smile on his face. "It's delicious, Touka-chan." ("Weirdo," she managed to stutter in reply.) 

The eighth time was as Touka pinned him down to the carpet, now a bloody mess, the both of them surrounded by broken furniture and shattered walls. His kagune writhed underneath him and hers spat fire from her shoulder. She could see the blood in his mouth —  _my blood in his mouth,_ she thought — as he apologized over and over and over again ( _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry_ ) while Banjou and Nishio looked on in concern. 

The ninth time was after he threw a ghoul from Aogiri to the ground, cracked his finger, and asked him with an eerie coolness that sharply contrasted the twin streams that would later flow ceaselessly down his face, "Do you know the sound a live centipede makes as it crawls into your ear?" This was shortly preceded by "What's a thousand minus seven?", though that was mostly drowned out by the other ghoul's screaming.

The tenth time was as he sat bleeding on the roof of some building they had run away to after a brutal three-way clash against Aogiri and the CCG, with his back against the railing, looking down at her just as she stared back at him with fearful and angry eyes.

"You do realize," she spat, not even bothering to hide her anger, anger at both her own powerlessness and his outrageous need to be a self-sacrificing hero, "that even for you there's a limit to how much a ghoul can regenerate."

"I know."

She tore off a strip of her jacket and pressed it onto one of the many wounds — and by wounds she meant  _holes_  — in his abdomen. He winced, hissed quietly in pain, and she ignored him. "So why the  _fuck_ would you let yourself be skewered like some pig?!"

"Well, thanks to that, they let their guard down so we were able to finish them off pretty easily —"

"Don't you fucking  _dare_ —"

"You were crying, Touka-chan."

Her hands froze. "What?"

"You saw Ayato-kun didn't you?" 

Her hands started trembling and she tried frantically — unsuccessfully — to force it to a stop. He had seen her,  _her_  of all people, in a moment of weakness.

"Hinami-chan was with him too."

"Don't —"

She never had the chance to tell him what not to do, because in that moment his arms wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her against him. 

"You've always been there for me, Touka-chan, so even if it's only this, I want to do something for you in return."

"Wh — wha —" she stuttered, unable to think of a proper response. "What are you — If you think this is comforting to me in  _any way_ —"

He released her, leaning back slightly to look directly at her face. "Personally, I think the best remedy for any kind of injury is human warmth. Or I guess, in this case, ghoul warmth." He had that irritating, happy-go-lucky smile on his face. She was surprised, and then angry, at how much she had missed it. "You held my hand that night for hours until I stopped crying, and for the first time in a long time it felt like the darkness wasn't going to come in through the window and crush me after all."

Touka's retort caught in her throat. His hands took a hold of hers. Tears glistened in his eyes.

"We'll get them back, Touka. We'll bring your family back to you."

And then all of a sudden tears were streaming down her face too. A sob pushed its way up her throat as her arms went around his neck and she pulled him down towards her — or she pushed herself up towards him — and his arms wrapped around the small of her back, gently holding her body against his. When Ayato had left she had cried to herself, alone in the small, messy apartment she used to share with him. For the first time in years, since her father died, she cried loudly and hysterically, hiccuping, her nose running, her sadness and frustration and loneliness bursting out of her and rearing their ugly heads all at once.

They remained there for a long time, not moving from that spot until Touka's cries declined into sniffles. The wind was biting against her skin, but somehow she didn't care. She had gotten used to the cold, used to the pain it brought as the ice crawled over her wounds and left them frozen in time, wide and gaping and never to heal, but as she sat there in his arms she realized the ice had already begun thawing a long time ago.

Kaneki held her face tenderly in his hands, his touch warming her face, and smiled at her (the  _jerk_ ). "Better?"

"Shut up," she mumbled, glaring at him with pink and swollen eyes.

 

* * *

 

The eleventh time Touka saw him cry was on a frigid, snowy day. The two walked side by side, hands shoved in their coat pockets to protect them from the glacial wind.

He sighed, his breath forming vapour in front of his face. "For once, I'd like it to be at least relatively warm on my birthday."

"It's better this year than last year at least."

A laugh, calm and quiet. "In many ways."

Before Touka could ask what he meant, he looked off to his right, and with an "Ah!", jogged towards a small park. The small playground and what appeared to be a sandbox were blanketed with snow, the way someone might have covered old furniture in a forgotten house with a white sheet.

"This is where I used to play as a kid," he mused.

"Feeling sentimental?"

A tint of sadness coloured his smile. "A little. I used to play alone a lot back then, waiting for my mom to finish work." He brought his hands to his face and breathed into them.

_But you aren't alone anymore._

Touka stepped around him, turning to face him. She held her arms up in front of her, elbows pointing down. "Hands," she said.

He tilted his head slightly, puzzled, but stepped forward and raised his hands towards hers, their bare palms touching. Her fingers wound their way through his, tightening. His eyes widened with understanding, and then joy, and then his hands were holding hers just as tight. 

He leaned his forehead onto hers and closed his eyes, and she caught the sight of tears at the corners.

She smiled with him.  _Crybaby._

As day turned to night and the white sky was replaced with a black veil decorated with a silver moon and faintly shimmering stars, the two walked back home, hands linked together. Even as the darkness settled and the temperature dropped, the warmth lingered, strong and resilient. 

 


End file.
